Snowshoes are useful for walking across deep snow. Winter travelers in motor vehicles, snowmobiles, and small aircrafts typically carry snowshoes in the event they become stranded and need to walk across deep snow to obtain help. Snowshoes are generally too large to store in a motor vehicle, snow machine, or small aircraft for only emergency use. Further, if lashed to the exterior of a snow machine, snowshoes may even present a collision hazard if they extend over the sides of the snowmobile or if they fall off the snowmobile onto the trail.
Snowmobilers are particularly at risk when traveling in the snow covered wilderness. Lives can be saved by having snowshoes when stranded in deep snow. However, conventional snowshoes fail to provide users with requisite versatility by lacking compactness, convenience, and low-cost. Additionally, conventional snowshoes typically are incapable of being collapsed.
Early versions of collapsible snowshoes have been complicated in design and difficult to assemble in an emergency. The last thing that users need in an emergency is a collapsible snowshoe that is complicated to assemble and includes various parts that could get lost in the snow during assembly.
As such, there is a need for a snowshoe that is collapsible, versatile, light-weight, compact, easy to assemble and provides its user with adequate floatation, articulation, control, and traction.